Four Times Phineas Lied About His Feelings
by Indigo Signora
Summary: ...and one time he didn't. Sometimes, how you truly feel about someone is difficult to admit to those around you. Sometimes, it's even harder to admit it to yourself.
1. Isabella

Phineas was torn between curling a comforting arm around his ex of thirty seconds and leaving her be, unsure of the proper tact. He compromised by laying a hand awkwardly on her shoulder. Isabella had been his very first girlfriend. This was his very first breakup. He hadn't the slightest clue as to how to deal with female breakup emotions, particularly the stony silence kind with which he was now being met.

Isabella cried no tears, but the dullness in her usually brilliant chocolate eyes was somehow more heart-rending than sobs. She did not meet his gaze; her blank stare was locked on a spot across her room: a framed photo of the two of them, arm in arm, taken some years ago.

She did not so much sigh as deflate as a rush of long-suffering breath escaped her lips. "It's someone else, isn't it," she deadpanned. "I knew it."

Phineas' heart tripped a beat, but he refused to give her the satisfaction... or the further heartbreak... of assenting to the forlorn accusation. Instead, he pulled his hand away and answered with a "no" that was probably too defensive to sound legitimate.


	2. Django

"Sorry to hear that, man," Django offered with sincere sympathy.

"Yeah," Phineas intoned. "I thought it could work, but it just... didn't."

Django nodded grimly in return. However, he leaned in and asked in a conspiratorial voice, "So, _is_ there someone else?" The young man, budding artist of eighteen and a best friend second only to Ferb, was peering with sly curiosity, the corners of his narrow lips turned up in a slight grin. Phineas was a breath away from answering when he hesitated, distracted.

Every aspect of Django Brown was enough to stop him in his tracks: the tufts of impossibly soft-looking brown hair poking out from beneath his knit cap; the scar on his left hand, courtesy of a soldering gun used during a mercifully brief stint in metallurgical sculpture; the faded suede shoes half-hidden beneath the frayed hems of his Salvation Army jeans. It was as if he had stepped out of one of his own masterpieces. Django was the personification of artistic divinity.

With a great deal of effort, Phineas managed to bite back the sensation of awe and replied with a defiant "no."


	3. Linda

Linda had seen her youngest son in the occasional, albeit uncharacteristic, funk, but never had she seen him quite so preoccupied. She knew that Phineas had outgrown the age where he was likely to share everything with her, but it still went against her motherly instincts to sense a problem and let it go un-nurtured. Fortunately, she managed to catch him before he could slink up to his room. "What did you get up to today, sweetie?" she asked brightly, hoping to mask any nosiness with a tone of typical Mom curiosity. "Spent time with Isabella, I assume?"

Phineas paused and sighed almost imperceptibly. "Mom, Isabella and I broke up."

Linda's heart gave a lurch at the distress her boy was inevitably bottling up inside. "Oh, honey," she bemoaned, cradling him in a soothing Mom hug. She felt him squirm a bit, but she responded by tightening her grasp. Finally he slackened and returned the hug in kind.

Drawing away slightly, Linda thought she might have spotted something else in her son's eyes. "Honey, is there anything else bothering you?"

He was a moment in answering. "No, Mom. I'm fine."


	4. Ferb

No one else could have understood the bond between the two stepbrothers, but the pair in question had never thought anything of their uncanny ability to understand each other without conventional communication. And so, as always, Ferb didn't even have to open his mouth to convey exactly what was going on in that spectacular brain hidden beneath the shock of emerald green hair. He only had to raise one fine eyebrow in a precise manner to make his inquiry known.

"It's nothing," Phineas replied to the unspoken query, his agitated pacing of the room belying the dismissal. "Ever since I broke up with Isabella, I've felt kind of bad for her, but _I_ don't feel bad, you know? I always thought that nobody is supposed to be happy after a breakup, but I feel..." He paused thoughtfully, searching for the right term.

"Relieved," was the offered completion to the statement.

Phineas lit up. "Yeah, relieved." He finally plunked down onto the edge of his bed. With a sigh, he buried one hand in his hair and struggled to find the correct words to assess the situation. Emotions were not exactly his forte, specifically those pertaining to the female gender. "I didn't feel like it—I mean the relationship—was... right. It's hard to explain."

Ferb's even gaze shifted almost imperceptibly, but Phineas was able to draw on the look of understanding in his brother's features. But slightly more disturbing was the _knowing_ look in Ferb's jade eyes. His expression indicated that he knew far more about the reason for the breakup that Phineas had ever confided in him. In that moment, Phineas was at a crossroads, stuck between finally divulging the emotional storm that had been brewing for ages or continuing the charade in hopes of ignoring it all. Of course Ferb wouldn't judge... Ferb was his brother, his best friend, his partner in—well, if not crime, then the breaking of physical laws! It was a secret Phineas had been keeping for too long, and if he could just work up the courage, then—

"Just tell him," Ferb said out of the blue, interrupting Phineas' mental debate.

And of course, _of course_, the default response that came out of Phineas' mouth was "I don't know what you're talking about."


	5. Django Revisited

Hardly daring to make a sound, Phineas peered in through the art room door, hoping against hope that, for the time being, he would remain unseen. His knuckles were clenched white on the door frame as his gaze swept the room... and sure enough, there was his target.

Django was seated near a corner, his back mostly to Phineas. Phineas supposed that Django wouldn't have noticed an intruder anyway, given how intense he was about his work. And for a moment, Phineas was mesmerized too. The young artist was seated before a pottery wheel, his foot pressed against the pedal that kept the wheel spinning. His hands played over the gleaming hunk of wet clay, and the way his deft strokes shaped the blob was almost magical to behold. The simplest touch altered the clay in precise ways, either by hollowing it out or changing the overall figure. Soon, the once-indistinguishable lump was transformed into an elegant vase.

So engrossed was he by the process that Phineas didn't realize just how far he had leaned through the doorway. With a sudden swoop of instability, he lost both his grasp on the doorframe and his footing, and he stumbled sideways, banging into the door with a huge racket and staggering into the room.

Django's head shot up, and he whipped around, eyes wide. At seeing Phineas, however, his look of alarm melted into one of pleasant surprise. "You don't have to spy, you know. I don't mind if people watch me work." His casual smile was almost too alluring to trust.

Phineas, cursing the red-hot blush that was creeping up his face, attempted an offhand grin and sauntered over to Django, careful not to appear too eager. When he was at the young man's side, just close enough to observe the pottery process in detail without getting _too_ close, Phineas felt his heart almost tripping over itself. Being so near to Django was making him sweat, and he withstood the urge to stuff his trembling hands in his pockets. Suddenly, his best-laid plans seemed fruitless. There was no good way to go about telling him—it was stupid—it would never work—

His mental assault was interrupted by a voice: Django's voice, both rough-edged and disarmingly lulling at the same time, just like his brush strokes.

"Do you want to try?" he was asking. Without waiting for an answer, he gripped one of Phineas' hands in his own and brought it to the wheel. The touch made Phineas' breath catch in his throat, and he prayed that the artist couldn't hear the thunderous pounding in his chest.

He soon discovered that Django didn't, in fact, have magical powers that controlled the clay. The malleable goo beneath Phineas' fingertips melded at the lightest contact, just as it had for the artist. For a moment he was in awe over both the clay shape forming at his command and Django's grasp. Django's fingers were slick with water and liquid clay, and Phineas soon felt the silt covering his own digits.

"What do you think?" Django questioned. Phineas almost didn't dare to think it, but Django's tone bore _something_, a hint that there was a hidden meaning disguised in the nonchalant words. He tried to stop the train of thought, but it barrelled along at about a million miles a second, leaving no room for scepticism or doubt.

Phineas struggled briefly with a hundred different responses. He turned to Django, who was looking up at him expectantly. As their gazes locked, there was no mistaking the fire in those molten brown eyes, and Phineas knew that there _was_ subtext. Whether it was an interested inquiry or a condemning demand, Phineas couldn't be sure. For a split second, he felt as if he was dangling over a great precipice, where the outcome of _everything_ would depend on just how he answered the question.

Distracted by Django's continuing grip on his hand, Phineas hesitated before speaking, then took the plunge. "I... like it. A lot." His gut wrenched in anticipatory agony as he stared into those painfully enticing chocolate irises.

After a second that seemed to span over countless millennia, the tiniest grin cracked Django's calm expression. "Yeah," he said, "I like it too." He returned his gaze to the pottery wheel, the small smile still playing on his lips. "I've liked it for a long time. It's great that someone else can, you know, share that interest."

"Y-yeah, it's great," Phineas stammered, his heart beating no less fast—although, this time for a different reason. He could hardly believe... but Django had just said... unless he meant... but it had to be...

Again, his blind tumbling of thoughts was interrupted by Django—this time, by Django's other hand grabbing his. "So, where do we go from here?" he asked matter-of-factly.

Phineas finally felt an enormous grin splitting across his face. "I don't know—you're the artist, you tell me." He placed his other hand on top of Django's, their digits now completely covered in the gritty silt of the clay.

Django laughed. When the chuckles died down, he stared at Phineas with an unusually serious expression. "So, the reason you broke up with Isabella..."

"There _was_ someone else," Phineas finished for him. "I lied. Sorry." He grinned again, this time sheepishly. "I'm normally more honest than that, I swear."

"We'll see about that," Django said, though he accompanied it with a wink. He leaned back, a pleased yet incredulous look on his face. "So you really like it... me, I mean."

And in that moment, there was no more need to hide the truth. Phineas smiled to himself, finally acknowledging the benefit of honesty. "Yeah. I do."


End file.
